down some portions of the palace, while a fire which suddenly broke out carried on the work of devastation. The prince was seized with a chill, and died in the arms of his wife. The king and queen, with a crowd following them, ran to the door of the room, and bursting it open, dragged out the bride. Attributing their misfortune to her and to her father, they ordered the latter to be beheaded, and inflicted unheard-of cruelties on the former. The next morning she was paraded round the city, astride a donkey, with ghoul poured on her head. She then had her eyes plucked out with red-hot pincers, and ultimately, as if the work of vengeance still remained incomplete, she was cast upon the pyre erected for her husband's funeral. But throughout all these indignities she was unmoved. Calmly she sat on the pyre, with the dead prince in her lap, unhurt by the fire, which after blazing for a time, was suddenly extinguished by an unseen agency. Days and months passed over her head, and she still sat with the dead body of the child at her breast. Demons, ghosts, hob-goblins and other evil spirits came to her, and with jaws wide open, danced round her, saying, "Give us the corpse, and we wall make a feast of it." But the look that she cast upon them was so fierce in its intensity that even they fled before it.
At length a beautiful girl appeared before her and muttered some Mantras over the dead child, which at once recalled it to life. After this, other visitors daily brought milk and other necessaries for the prince; and Malancha passed her days in his company, regardless of her own privations and dangers. The infant smiled, and she smiled with him. He cried, and she was unhappy. She bathed him with her tears, dried his body with her hairs, and putting the black paint beneath his eyes, kissed him a thousand times. The spirits of hell could not bear this happy sight, and to starve him they drank up on the sly the milk on which he lived. Malancha was forced at last to leave the place, and go with the child at her breast in search of fresh milk. She went far without success, and while still seeking, she was waylaid by a tiger,
